


Death and the Maiden

by LunaChai



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22814722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaChai/pseuds/LunaChai
Summary: Annette moves into an apartment haunted by a ghost. A surly ghost who grows oddly attached to her presence.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 41
Kudos: 247





	Death and the Maiden

**Author's Note:**

> 15K WHAT. i am utterly incapable of writing anything short for felannie aaaAAA some slight age changes for timeline reasons, also modern pop culture exists in this universe for reasons??
> 
> i apologize in advance if this weirds anyone out, it doesn't weird me out but my brother tells me i'm a very weird person myself

The studio apartment is in good condition, a prime location, and _far_ too affordable for Annette to _not_ be suspicious. Her questions are only answered once she books the walkthrough.

Manuela Casagranda, the landlady, is nice enough. She's confident and capable, leading Annette through the open common room, polished washroom, and outlooking balcony with elegant poise and pitch-perfect descriptions. Annette takes in the pristine carpet, runs a finger over the freshly-renovated granite table tops, and approvingly notes the modern lining of the cabinets. The complex is quiet. It's calm. The neighbors are more or less sane. And it's right in the heart of United Fódlan, less than a ten minute walk away from Garreg Mach University.

It's everything she could have hoped for, all at a stunningly affordable price.

Annette drops her hand from the counter as Manuela finishes her initial pitch, turning to her with a proud, sugary smile.

"Well?" she says invitingly. "Tempting, isn't it?"

"It's perfect," Annette says, returning the smile. She motions for Manuela to follow her, and they descend the stairwell to the ground floor.

Manuela is excited, already talking down payment and rental agreements and arranging for a move-in date when—

"So," Annette says, swiveling on her heel and setting her hands on her hips, "when were you going to tell me about the ghost?"

.

.

.

Annette Fantine Dominic can see ghosts.

It's been a lifelong condition. She is spirit-sensitive, as she calls it, thanks to her biological Crest. Which is rare, but not supremely so; there are several families in United Fódlan, remnants of the old nobility, born with Crests and able to sense the more supernatural aspects of life. Throughout the entire walkthrough, Annette had noticed the menacing shadow of a vengeful spirit quietly lurking in the corner of the studio and watching her with a loathing gaze.

Manuela apologizes profusely for about thirty minutes before Annette wrestles the story from her.

Three years ago, the studio's tenant— _young man,_ very _attractive, didn't talk about his work much,_ supplies Manuela—was murdered. The nature of his death was immediately overtaken by federal officials and swathed in secrecy, with Manuela privy to none of it. But ever since that day, she's had extreme difficulties renting out that apartment. Tenants would claim strange noises, flickering lights, falling objects, afterimages in the windows, and other textbook examples of hauntings by vengeful spirits. And as Manuela wasn't fortunate enough to be born with a Crest, she has no way of exorcising the space.

At the very least, it's all to Annette's benefit. She haggles the apartment down to a price that's _almost_ immoral (but really, attempting to sell a haunted apartment without warning is even more immoral—ghosts are a _huge_ piece of work) before she signs the contract.

They settle on the move-in date, and Annette prepares to live with a ghost.

.

.

.

_The number you have called is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone._

_BEEP._

"Um, hi, Father. Dad. Papa, person, thing. Ugh, stupid... It's me, Annette. Just calling to say hi. I finished moving in. The place is nice. Well, when I say nice... I mean, don't worry! It's a great spot, clean and roomy, and I got it for cheap, too. Anyways, just... hope you're doing well. I know work's busy, so I won't bother you too much. Remember to eat! Love you."

_BEEP._

.

.

.

Annette moves in over the course of two days with the help of her two dearest friends: Dedue Molinaro and Mercedes von Martritz.

Dedue hauls her heavy, heavy furniture up the stairs as easily as potted plants, while Mercedes shelves Annette's (many) books with a bit of tender loving care. Annette pays them in pizza and leaves her small TV running regency movies, apologizing profusely for taking up their time. Dedue only smiles in his quiet, warm way, and Mercedes only laughs with the elegant wave of a hand.

All the while, the ghost bides his time, waiting for an opportune moment to strike.

Annette knows that he hates her. She can feel his hostility licking up the walls like fire. It's perfectly normal; ghosts are naturally territorial, and any intrusion is immediately met with resistance.

Sure enough, Annette is met with textbook hauntings over the next two weeks: rattling vents, crooked picture frames, electronics with a mind of their own, and loud, invisible thumps, like someone is hitting the walls. She stubbornly digs in her heels. This is _her_ apartment, and she paid for it fair and square. If someone's going to leave, it won't be her.

It's three weeks into the semester when Annette stumbles upon one odd fact: the ghost quiets when she sings.

The accident is a happy one. She's hit the weekend after a stretch of long lessons, dense material, and scrappy shenanigans with her elementary students. So she snaps out the cord of her janky, too-echoey microphone, throws up the budget karaoke software on her laptop, and starts shamelessly belting Disney tunes at the top of her lungs, because she'll be _gosh darned_ if a ghost stops her from indulging in her favorite hobby. _Love is an Open Door_ rattles the dishes in the kitchen, while _And At Last, I See the Light_ soothes the succulents lining her balcony. As she rounds _Into the Unknown,_ she waits for her screen to start vibrating or the mirrors to start flashing or the pipes to start wailing.

She's met with peace and quiet.

Encouraged, Annette continues the trend. She cleans her apartment to the tune of her extensive Spotify playlist, humming along to baroque fugues, conducting numbers from musical theater, and rapping alongside up-and-coming pop stars. Sometimes, she even debuts her own silly songs: steaks and cakes and crumbs and yums. She's too self-conscious to sing when the ghost is watching her, his eyes sharp and cold and judgmental—but she has a wide variety of music tastes, and if the ghost's silence is anything to go by, so does he.

After a few days, he stops bothering her altogether.

..

.

_The number you have called is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone._

_BEEP._

"Hi, Dad. It's Annette. I heard that you're traveling to a temple in the Oghma Mountains? Stay safe, and use bug spray! Um, on my end... School started, and it's really fun! Some classes more than others. I'm focusing on music education for voice and piano, but it actually involves a ton of human development. I have a bunch of hours to log with this elementary school down the street. The kids are super cute, but they're kind of all hellions. You should see this one girl named Flayn, she—oh, I'm sorry, I'm rambling on. I'm probably going to be cut—"

_BEEP._

.

.

.

Two weeks after Annette discovers her singing solution, the ghost breaks the peace.

She's reshelving her books after a particularly hectic day. Scattered around her is a host of assorted textbooks and references, collated with her students' first essays. She's already decided to use rainbow pen for grading; she'll protect them from the horrors of the Red Pen for just a little while longer. And for her background music, she plays oldies but goodies—soft pop from her middle school days, Owl City and One Republic.

Of course, the ghost is leaning in the corner and watching her, so she can't bring herself to sing. It's just too _embarrassing,_ even if he's already dead. Which is, if she reflects deeper, a very sad testament to her lack of self-esteem, so she chooses not to reflect deeper.

Annette has finished her reshelving project and started wiping the shelf free of dust when the ghost acts up. She senses him reach out his hand, and as per his special ghostly powers of screwing with electronics, _Vanilla Twilight_ spontaneously pauses on her laptop.

"I know you can see me," he says. It's the first time he's spoken, and his voice is dry and textured, but oddly melodic, a bit like a diminished interval.

Despite the shock, Annette manages to keep her face placid as she wipes at the bookshelves.

"You only sing when I'm not in sight," says the ghost. He doesn't make footsteps, but his voice is getting louder, which means _oh Seiros he's coming closer._ Ghosts are not supposed to be this cognizant. Ghosts are supposed to leave her alone and focus on breaking her lights and tipping her dinnerware and doing other such ghostlike things.

Annette clears her throat, keeping her gaze trained on the book spines.

"Steaks and cakes," says the ghost, almost singsong. "Crumbs and yums."

She feels heat flushing down her cheeks to her neck. Oooh, this ghost plays _dirty._

"You're blushing."

She _hates_ him.

Annette clears her throat. Well, if she wants him to leave her alone, then all she has to do is sing. Right?

" _Oh, how I just love to clean,_ " she begins tremulously, filling the silence. " _Clean the library room. A flash of light and then a big—_ BAH!"

The ghost darts in front of her, the apparition of his face pressing so close that she swears she can feel his breath over her nose, which is impossible, ghosts can't breathe. She flails as she steps back—

—only to remember that she's on a stepladder.

Annette promptly falls and lands squarely on her bum. She hisses, rubbing her sore rear end, and glares up at the ghost. He's only preening like a smug cat.

"So, I was right," he drawls.

She tries to kick at his (long) legs, which is useless. His form isn't actually _there,_ after all; she's just able to sense his spirit so it feels like she's seeing him.

"You were also _rude,_ " she says.

"Irrelevant." He extends a hand as if to help her up, then freezes and lowers it. "The name's Felix. And you are?"

"Busy," Annette says crisply. She uses the shelf to pull herself to her feet and dusts off her skirt. "It was nice to meet you, goodbye, let's never speak again."

She turns from the shelves and heads to the kitchen, but doesn't need a Crest to know that Felix is trailing behind her. She closes her eyes, fiercely attempting to push down her irritation.

"We just started talking," Felix says. His syllables are staccato and efficient despite his leisurely words. "Aren't we supposed to at least exchange pleasantries?"

"You're basically raiding my living space," Annette snaps, opening the fridge to block him off. "I don't owe you anything."

"Technically, it was my living space first," Felix says drily.

"Until you died."

"An unfortunate complication."

Annette slams the fridge shut and wheels around to look him straight in the eye. His face is pale and angular, beautiful in a sharp, steely kind of way. He's much taller than she initially presumed, rising a whole head above her. A collared white shirt stretches across his lithe shoulders, the top two buttons undone to show a strip of collarbone, _and oh no the ghost is kind of hot._ That's weird. She regrets looking at him.

"Look," she hisses, eyes flashing, "I'm alive, you're dead, and this apartment is rightfully mine. So either you sit in a corner and leave me alone, or I'm calling my dad to come exorcise you!"

Felix meets her gaze, unfazed, and says: "He doesn't even answer your calls."

Annette staggers back, winded, his words hitting her like a bolt in the chest.

An odd flicker of concern passes over Felix's face, but it quickly disappears back into his sharp eyes and angular cheekbones. He only looks more stubborn.

"You know what," Annette whispers, "I'm done with you. From now on, you don't exist."

She walks through him, letting his pale form ripple around her. It's the rudest thing to do to a ghost—remind them of their death and nonexistence.

She doesn't care.

.

.

.

_The number you have called is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone._

_BEEP._

...

......

"I'd just... I'd like to hear your voice. Leave me a message, at least. Please, Dad? I love you."

_BEEP._

.

.

.

Annette ignores the ghost for three weeks, and in a response of post-mortem maturity... he tantrums.

She returns from her long shifts with the children in Teuteches Brook Elementary (where the bright-eyed, green-haired student named Flayn inspires equal parts affectionate joy and absolute rage), only to find her apartment a mess: books strewn about, dishes capsized, electronics haywire. Felix is nowhere to be found.

Every time, Annette huffs a breath, cleans up the mess, and resolutely chalks up one more reason to hate the selfish, sharp-tongued, immature resident ghost.

The small mercy is that he never breaks anything. Her budget is already tight with grad school and accommodations, barely kept afloat by the long hours she keeps in private tutoring for piano and voice. He seems to be aware of that much, assuming he even notices her come in during the wee stretches of the morning.

She still hates him. She already spends five days of her week managing unruly children; she doesn't need another one in her own apartment.

As the three weeks draw to a close, Felix's petty rebellion slowly peters out. Maybe he realizes that his temper isn't earning him anything. Or maybe even ghosts get tired. Either way, when Annette comes home one night and finds it—shockingly—just the way she left it that morning, she's grateful. She kicks off her shoes, settles comfortably in her loveseat, and curls up for an evening nap.

And then the TV promptly switches on to a horror movie, right in the middle of a jump scare.

Annette shrieks and bolts upright, clutching the nearest pillow to her chest. She seizes the remote and shuts down the offending appliance, then sends a sizzling look at the smug ghost in the corner.

"Felix," she hisses.

He blinks calmly at her. "Yes?"

Then Annette remembers that she's supposed to be ignoring him. She lies back down and turns away.

The TV switches on again.

Annette sits back up, ready to give Felix a piece of her mind, when she realizes that there's a nicer movie playing. _Pride and Prejudice,_ to be exact. One of her favorites of all time. She's a sucker for regency movies, and the dynamic of a spitfire heroine and a surly hero never disappoints.

Felix clocks her bright eyes, and his lips twitch upward. "So, that's more your taste."

"Maybe," Annette mutters reluctantly.

The TV switches off. "Boring."

_Every_ time she thinks he might be the _least_ bit tolerable, something like this happens. She glares at him with genuine fire this time. It's late, she's tired, she temporarily hates children, and she does _not_ need her dead roommate criticizing her taste in media.

"Are you done being an ass?" she says scathingly.

"That depends," Felix says. "Are you done ignoring me?"

What a _jerk._

His eyes turn to her. They should be faded and pale, tainted by his apparition, but instead, they're an intense amber-caramel that blaze right through her. Unfortunately, at the moment, the heated color only goads her further.

Annette braces her jaw, reaching for every last bit of patience she can find. "What do you want from me, Felix?" she says, dead-even. "This is getting ridiculous."

"Really?" Felix says. "I thought I was being more considerate than the spirits that like to paint bloody messages on the wall. Kept it pretty tame."

" _What do you want._ "

Felix clearly has a ready response, but it dies on his tongue. His eyes fix on her, and his expression turns inscrutable.

Annette waits, perched on the knife's edge of her temper.

"I want to ask three questions," Felix eventually says. His tone's recovered, crisp and cold. "Then I want three honest answers to those questions."

Annette's anger turns into confusion. That's certainly not what she expected. She was preparing herself for something along the lines of _I want you to get out, I want to have this place to myself, I want you to die._

"And then you'll leave me alone?" she says. She tries to sound firm, but her voice comes out small, a little pleading. She's so tired.

Felix pauses, then inclines his head. "If you want me to."

Annette exhales, closing her eyes. Three questions. She can take three questions. It won't take longer than fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes, and this will all be over and forgotten.

"Alright," she says. "I'm ready."

She scoots over and pats the space next to her. Felix stares at her like she's grown two heads, and she blushes self-consciously. She never tries to be rude with him; he just kind of... gets a rise out of her.

Blessedly, Felix makes no remark. He sits next to her, crossing one long leg over the other. Black slacks, Annette notes, well-fitted down to vibrant teal socks and flexible close-toed black shoes. Of course he'd wear colored socks with black slacks and shoes. What a contrary man.

Felix leans against the opposite edge of the loveseat, putting space between them. "First question," he says evenly. "Why do you keep calling your father when you know he won't pick up?"

That tears a small, bitter laugh out of Annette. "Wow. Right out the gate."

"It doesn't make sense."

Annette pulls her knees onto the couch and stares sullenly at the floor. "Yeah. I guess it doesn't. But I keep calling in the hopes that one day, it will. Persistence is always seen as a laudable character trait in stories, you know?"

"It's killing you." His response surprises her, mainly because it's not accusatory. It's almost... understanding.

"It's not," she says defensively.

He snorts and turns away. Whatever moment of compassion he had is gone. "Fine then. It's not."

Annette grits her teeth. "Second question?"

Felix pauses again.

"Second question," he says. "What are you?"

Annette glares. "A human girl."

He gives her a flat look, and she relents. If she's only going to speak to this ghost for ten more minutes, she might as well do it nicely.

"I'm a grad student at Garreg Mach University," she says. "I'm studying for a masters in Music Education."

"Do you like it?"

"Is that your third question?"

Another flat look. Annette sighs. She's not sure why the ghost is asking such useless questions, rather than current events, scientific advancements, or the status of whoever he's begrudging for a lifetime. It's as if Aladdin got ahold of the magic lamp, only to wish for things like a perfect test score or a pet cat.

"Yes, I like it," she says. "I've always loved learning. And when Flayn isn't dumping schools of plush fish on my desk, the kids are pretty cute, too."

Maybe she's imagining it, but his gaze seems to warm. "I see."

Annette drops her eyes. Felix is much more pleasant when he isn't throwing things everywhere or scaring her off of stepstools. If only he could always behave so well. "Your third question?" she says.

A layer of frost coats Felix gaze, and he looks to the window. For a moment, Annette wonders if it'll shatter beneath the ice of his scrutiny.

Then he breathes in and speaks:

"Can I talk with you tomorrow?"

Annette blinks.

Felix's eyes remain fixed on the window.

"Sorry, what?" Annette says. His tone was so cold and detached that she _couldn't_ have heard him properly—

"I said." He cleared his throat. "Can I talk with you tomorrow. That was my third question."

Annette stares at him, uncomprehending.

Felix's gaze darts to her, and she catches a peep of that amber-caramel color before it disappears.

"But," she mumbles, "it was only supposed to be three questions."

"If you wanted it to be. Yes."

"You can't do that!" Her face is reddening, but it's because he's so _irritating,_ he's so _evil._ "That's not—you can't put this on me, that's not fair of you!"

Felix shoves his hands in his pockets. "It's a question, not an order," he mutters. "Just say no."

"Then tell me why," she says fiercely, "and I'll give my answer."

"Why what?"

She balks. "Why you want to keep talking with me! We hate each other, you know!"

"Do we?"

"You were trashing my apartment for weeks!" she says incredulously.

Felix takes his hands out of his pockets to awkwardly cross his arms. This seems to dissatisfy him, and soon enough, his hands are back in his pockets. "I was investigating you."

" _Investigating—_ excuse me?"

"Annette Fantine Dominic." He stands up and leans against the windowsill, pale and flickering. "Descendant of a once Noble House, born with the Minor Crest of Dominic. Named after the genius sorceress and prolific author from the Era of Unification, who taught at Garreg Mach Monastery for the remainder of her life before disappearing into legend."

"How did you—"

"Now a graduate student at Garreg Mach University, pursuing a master's degree in Music Education while tutoring privately to pay the bills."

"Alright, I'm the one who told you that."

Felix straightens, and she sees his eyes sharpen. Oh, goddess, he took her words as a challenge, didn't he? "You've had two boyfriends. One in high school, a good friend named Ashe Ubert—you started dating after he asked you to prom—and the other in college, a popular upperclassman named Claude von Reigan. Both relationships you dropped after five months, both because you decided you were better off as friends."

Annette's jaw is slack, the words stolen out of her mouth.

"Also, you've had two minor traffic violations," Felix continued. "You were tested as DUI for both, but in truth, you're just a bad driver. And have the tendency to blast musical numbers way too loud. Other than that, you're clean. Except for those three cases of accidental shoplifting where you forgot you had something in your bag."

He is just _the worst._

"First of all," says Annette haltingly, "that's a lowkey violation of privacy—actually, I think that qualifies as a highkey violation of privacy. Roommates don't run background checks on each other. Especially dead ones."

Felix seems to accept this without complaint. "Occupational hazard. I'd apologize, but I'm not sorry."

"Second of all," Annette continues, fuming, "you didn't have to trash my belongings while you were at it. You could have investigated _peacefully._ "

He has the decency to flush at that. At least, she thinks he's flushing. His skin is ghostly white and doesn't really have any pigment, but he ducks his head just slightly and looks kind of embarrassed.

"I wasn't trying to," he says. "I don't have much finesse anymore. It's hard to control."

Annette frowns. "What do you mean?"

"Are you familiar with ghostly abilities?"

"Not really." She doesn't watch horror movies. And even though she's been blessed—cursed?—with the ability to see ghosts, she never pursued the area much. Music always interested her more.

Felix nods. "I can... affect things." He waves a hand, and a section of books falls out of her shelf. Annette's about to yell at him, but she realizes that he carefully extracted a number of thin paperbacks that won't see any damage. "It's not really touching them. But this"—another wave of his hand, and the TV flickers on—"or this"—another, and the fullbody mirror at the doorway shifts angles—"are all possible. I can affect most objects in various ways. But it's not so much interacting with them, as it is... forcing energy into them."

Annette instantly snags the nearest pen and piece of paper to jot this down. It's a fascinating area that scratches her learning itch, and she hates to admit it, but he's good at explaining. "Is that why most hauntings are so generic?"

Felix shrugs. "Probably. There's not much control involved."

Annette finishes scrawling down her notes before he clears his throat. He returns to his seat next to her—this time, closer.

"I answered your question," he says. "It's time you answered mine."

"Sorry?" she says bemusedly. "What question?"

He narrows his eyes and shifts his weight, and she wonders if that means he's nervous. "You already forgot?"

"It's late and I'm tired." She pauses, then adds begrudgingly: "Sorry."

Felix looks away from her again. She listens to the clock tick thirteen seconds before he pulls together the words.

"Whether I can talk tomorrow. With you."

"Oh, right." Annette blinks, and her mind rewinds his words to play them again. "Oh."

She still has no idea why this ghost is interested in talking with her. He definitely hated her when she first moved in, and she definitely hated him back. Given that their interactions have been limited to arguing, insulting, and moderate vandalism, she's flabbergasted at the idea that he wants to not only make peace, but pursue some kind of friendship.

Then again, he's been haunting this apartment for three years. And while that's young for a ghost, she imagines that over one thousand days of solitude can get terribly lonely.

She knows what lonely feels like.

Annette makes her decision. She slowly reaches out her hand, swallowing the nervousness in the back of her throat.

"Okay," she says. "We can talk. Just... stop 'affecting' my things. Deal?"

The tension in Felix's shoulders eases at once. She might be imagining it, but she thinks his eyes are smiling when he looks at her. "Fine."

She waits, hand outstretched.

"...I can't shake your hand."

"Oh. Right. Um, sorry."

.

.

.

_The number you have called is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone._

_BEEP._

"Hi, Dad. It's Annette. I thought you should know... I'm living with a man now."

_BEEP._

"...Well, it was worth a shot."

.

.

.

Introducing Felix into her routine is like when Annette first introduced coffee into her routine: at first a little bitter, a little weird, and a little unfamiliar, but soon enough, irreplaceable.

It's as simple as casting a quick and bright _See you!_ before she flies out the door with a bagel jammed in her mouth, racing to her morning classes—just a little acknowledgement of him in the room.

Felix seems surprised when he first hears it. He only stares at her without a response.

The next day, he murmurs something like _Don't get run over._

The day after, it turns into _Study hard._

And eventually, it becomes _Have a nice day._

It's as simple as coming home weighed with reams of scribbly homework and playful little heart stickers half-peeling off her jeans, then saluting the ghost in the corner with an curious _How was your day?_

_Boring,_ Felix says at first.

The next day, _I read some of your books._

And by the next week, _Not bad. How was yours?_

Annette has to admit: it's nice, _really_ nice, to come back home with someone to talk to. She adores her phone calls and coffee dates with Mercie, of course, but Mercie is also drowning in med school. Felix is there. All the time. With nothing to do.

And it only takes a few weeks for him to open up over dinner.

"I was a police officer," he says, "training to be a detective."

Annette blinks, lifting her eyes from her easy-bake lasagna. "Really? You don't seem the..." She gestures vaguely at him. He's always seemed sort of brazen and impetuous to her, not one for careful investigation and paperwork.

But, no, now it makes sense— _occupational hazard,_ he said after he ran a background check on her. Occupational hazard, because he worked in law enforcement.

Felix smirks a little, and his eyes turn to the windowsill. "I was desperate to investigate a case from five years ago. No, eight by now." He pauses. "I kind of went behind my superior's back to pick up this apartment, just for a quick stakeout. Turns out that my lead was more dangerous than I thought. I happened to witness a handoff between an underground fighting ring and a crime syndicate."

She feels cold all over. "And you..."

"Were shot." He's scowling now, nearly pouting. "They sent three after me. I took down two."

She can only stare at him. He speaks of his own murder in such a blasé manner, as if chatting about the cloudy weather and not a close-combat bloodbath.

"Did you solve the case?" she says faintly, lowering her fork.

He arcs a brow. "Would I still be here if I did?"

That's right. He's tethered to this place, either from vengeance or regret. Given the circumstances, she supposes it has to be regret.

Annette folds her hands in her lap and stares at them, trying not to think of the image of Felix's twisted body beneath her slippers, bleeding a despairing amount of crimson into the carpet. "What was the case?" she says hesitantly.

Felix pauses for a moment. He watches the succulents grow out on her balcony.

"The death of my brother," he says. He shakes his head. "Murder. Not death."

Annette swallows with a dry mouth. "Where..."

"He's long gone by now." Felix shrugs and slides his hands into his pockets. "Unlike me, he didn't have any regrets."

The tragedy of that statement sinks its teeth into Annette for a moment. Then she shakes it off.

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have taken such a dangerous risk," she says, crossing her arms.

"Thank you," Felix says icily. "I definitely haven't thought about that for the past three years."

She quiets. It _is_ tragic for someone to die so young, even an acerbic, unlikable man who's haunting her apartment.

"I'm sorry," she says, and it's sincere.

Felix also relents, like a cat lowering its hackles. "You have a point. It wasn't anyone's fault but mine."

Annette returns to eating her lasagna. Felix asks her about her day, and she spends the night regaling him with stories about her overly inquisitive student Flayn, who somehow assembled a platter of lunch Jell-O into the shape of a giant fish, and her stern but loving single father, Seteth.

.

.

.

It's the end of autumn, it's the weekend, and Felix is being dramatic.

His dramatic moods don't come easily, but sometimes, a piece of news on the TV will send him into spluttering rage for the entire day— _did that scam really take off, you're telling me_ what _got hacked, how can people be so_ stupid. It gets to the point where, after three hours of hearing the same tirade, Annette expels a long sigh, plops down in the nearest chair, and opens her trusty notebook with purpose.

"I'm going to write you an opera, you know," she says. Operatic shows, like Felix, are exceedingly dramatic.

Felix stops mid-rant. "I thought you were going to be a teacher, not a composer."

"I can multitask." She flips open her notebook, etching neat lines as hodgepodge staff paper. "The Super Dramatic Opera of Felix Hugo Fraldarius, dead detective extraordinaire."

Felix takes a seat next to her, one aristocratic brow arched.

A spark enters Annette's eyes, and she grins. "I've got it. It can be... the Opera of the Phantom."

There's only silence as Felix watches her, bemused.

"Because you're a ghost, and—there was that popular—never mind." Annette slumps with a petty glare at him, and jots down something on her staff paper. C# minor, the most tragic key signature. 5/4, because Felix is routinely difficult for no reason.

"I have no idea what you're saying," Felix says truthfully.

"You must've lived under a rock."

"I had other priorities."

_Marcia moderato con moto,_ she writes for the tempo, because he seems aggressive and driven and he's always arguing with her. "We need to educate you on pop culture," she says. "You're a ghost with tons of free time. The _least_ you can do is be culturally relevant."

"Why be culturally relevant if I'm dead?"

"You are _only_ dead once you're culturally irrelevant," Annette says.

"Legally speaking, you're dead once your brain is dead."

She points a pen at him. "And that is why no one likes lawyers."

He grins crookedly in a way that sends heat to her cheeks, and it isn't _fair_ that someone so hot had to die and haunt her apartment.

It would have been nice if he was mindless or vicious like every other ghost of regret she had previously met, keening repetitive lamentations or looking at her with dim, doleful eyes. Instead, he's sarcastic, quick-witted, and uncomfortably present for someone who's supposed to have one foot in death.

No, that's not it. It would have been nice if he was alive, because then she could take him out for coffee and talk to him about crimes and music and drag him to see _Phantom of the Opera._

Only because he needs to be cultured.

.

.

.

"You should wear a ponytail more often," Felix says gruffly during her routine end-of-the-month apartment cleaning.

Annette quickly—self-consciously—slides out her hair tie, letting her orange waves crest back to her shoulders. It's a petty act of defiance.

"What," Felix says.

"I know you just want to make fun of me," Annette mutters. "If it looks that stupid, I won't do it anymore."

"Don't be ridiculous," Felix says. He's oddly snappish. "I never said it looked stupid."

"You didn't have to," Annette snaps back. "I know what you meant."

Felix huffs out a breath. It wafts up his bangs for a short comedic moment. "Why do you think I'm hell-bent on making you miserable?" he says sharply.

Annette turns squarely to him, shaking her hair tie like an angry fist. "What _else_ would all your weird, nitpicky little comments mean?"

" _Nitpicky_ comments?"

"Oh, come on! It's been happening all week! You said I smelled unusual last Wednesday, I looked 'really... pink' on Thursday, my smile was very shiny on Friday, my dress 'looks like it fits' on Saturday—"

"I'm trying to compliment you!" Felix barks. "It's not my fault that you can't take a compliment!"

An odd silence falls over the apartment.

Annette stares, hair tie still clutched in her half-raised hand.

Felix stares back, pale form wafting beneath the air conditioner.

"It," he says vaguely, "fit well. The dress. Better than usual. I was just saying."

She hears a waltz in her heartbeat: _one-two-three two-two-three._ Johann Strauss Jr., _Wiener Blut,_ perhaps, soft and new and a bit too romantic for comfort. _Wiener Blut_ was written for a royal wedding, after all.

Felix's response is to awkwardly fade into the wall and disappear.

Annette's eyes fall to her hair tie. She keeps staring, as if it'll provide her with answers.

_Wiener Blut_ keeps singing in the back of her mind.

.

.

.

"You know what's the worst thing about having a dead roommate?" Annette asks as winter rears and the semester draws to a close.

Felix pokes his head over the top of his book. Despite his claims that ghosts don't have much control of motion, he's been awfully careful with her book collection.

"What?" he asks.

"They never do the dishes." She is, of course, at the kitchen sink, rinsing the suds off of a particularly stubborn water bottle.

"I never _use_ the dishes."

"Or pay the rent."

"I'm the reason why the value on this apartment has sharply depreciated." He spreads his hands. "Consider that my contribution."

He's such a _smartass_ when he talks. His moody intellect is so annoying. And definitely not attractive in any way.

Annette frowns at him. "You got into trouble all the time at the precinct, didn't you?"

Felix is quiet.

"For insubordination," Annette guesses.

"Good guess," Felix says.

"Were you even a detective, or just a laundry list of HR violations?"

He snorts at that, his eyes crinkling at the edges. Annette feels a warm glow in her chest that she quickly stomps down. "Most of us weren't competing for Best Behaved," he admits.

Annette's curiosity perks up. "Did you have a team?"

"I had..." Felix lowers the book and stares into the far wall. His gaze is idle for a moment. Then he shakes his head and shrugs. "Coworkers. Two especially crazy ones."

Annette rinses the last dish and sits across from him, propping her chin on her hands. She sort of expects him to scowl and turn away, but surprisingly, his eyes warm at her attention.

"We were classmates in high school," he says. He sets the book aside and, shockingly, turns to face her completely. They're sitting across the table, focused on the conversation, on _each other,_ and have they ever done this before? It's oddly intimate and it puts a weird flutter in her stomach. "One of them kept smoking weed and sleeping around. The other kept getting into fights. She'd run herself through kickboxing three times a week, trying to be as strong as the guys."

Annette is sure that they're much nicer than Felix's unflattering, terse explanations. He has a habit of making everyone sound like the worst person in the world.

"It seems like the three of you really got along," she remarks.

Felix shrugs. His fingers reach for his book, then stop and lower: a conscious decision to engage with her. "They cleaned up. They were surprisingly competent by the time they joined the force."

"Oooh," says Annette, grinning. "You had a _thing_ for one of them, didn't you?"

"Ha. You should be a comedian."

"I'm just saying, I'm getting _vibes._ "

"The wrong vibes, maybe," Felix says drily. "The kickboxing girl—my brother dated her for a while."

Annette's voice halts in the back of her throat.

"I've been told I'm exactly like my brother." This time, he grabs the book, flips to a random page, and raises it to block off his face. "Maybe you're confusing his vibes with mine."

"Hey," she says softly.

She reaches out, her hand clasping the top of the book, and gently pushes it down. She's surprised to find that his face isn't cold and emotionless, but flickering with tension. He's upset.

"I'm sorry," she says, still soft. "I shouldn't have said anything."

He looks away, unable to meet her gaze. "It doesn't matter anymore."

"It seems like it does." Her hand ghosts down to rest on his, only to have her skin pass through air. Right. That.

Felix's gaze fixes on how her hand overlays his, juxtaposed in a weird, shimmery illusion. If she can read the movement of his eyes correctly, he only looks more upset.

"They don't... I assume they're... normal?" she says.

"They have Crests, if that's what you're getting at." His voice is rough.

She swallows a lump in her throat. "They don't visit you?"

"They tried." He lays down the book. Long, pale fingers rap on the cover. "I told them to f—get out."

"Why?"

"Crest or no Crest, the living shouldn't linger over the dead." He closes his eyes, and she's just making him even _more_ upset, why, why. "There's nothing they can do. They just need to move on and forget."

_My brother's death._

_I've been told I'm exactly like him._

"Oh," Annette breathes, and she suddenly wonders about Felix's parents—who they were and how they reacted to the death of his brother, what they told him at the funeral—

"Don't look at me like that." His tone is biting and his brows are sharp. "I didn't take pity when I was alive, and I'm not taking it now that I'm dead."

"What's so wrong with pity?" Annette says softly.

Felix's tongue falters at that.

Annette leans back in her chair, withdrawing her hand. Not out of disapproval or anger. Just giving him space.

She lets him think while she returns to the dishes.

.

.

.

Holidays round the corner, and the semester closes seamlessly. Annette turns off the TV and resolutely ignores the string of advertisements about happy families, large, warm meals, and gift exchanges with relatives.

The holidays always hurt. Every year, she hopes the pain will dull. Every year, she's proven wrong.

She has nowhere to go back to, so instead, she spends her break with Felix. She strings lights around her windows and playfully loads up one of her succulents with thumb-sized ornaments. Felix tries to help with the decorations, but when he accidentally pulls down her whole setup, blows a fuse, and blacks out the entire complex for eight hours, she solemnly forbids him from touching them for the rest of the month.

Thankfully, they live long enough to see Millennium Day—the biggest celebration of the year, inspired by the lost Millennium Festival those endless years ago in the Era of Unification.

_Holiday traditions?_ Felix prompts as little flakes of snow waft outside the window.

_I don't have any,_ Annette admits. With her mother passed on and her father always away, she never really had the chance.

_You should make a new one._ It takes a while for him to amend: _We should make a new one._

She smiles, her heart sparkling like warm cider.

He can't eat food and she can't do ghost magic, so they settle on the simple act of marathoning something on the TV. _What's nice and holiday-like?_ Annette asks, to which Felix responds, _How about horror movies?_ to which Annette tries to slap his arm before remembering that he's untouchable and bangs her hand painfully against the arm of the couch. (He only smirks. Curse him.)

Eventually, she proposes one of her favorite series: _Azure Moon,_ a period war drama based on the legendary archbishop, Byleth Eisner, and her struggle during the Era of Reunification.

Felix seems surprised at her choice. _Didn't think you'd be the type to like Azure Moon._

_It has everything,_ she responds, eyes alight. _Action, magic, romance, comedy, intrigue, character development, and a masterful blockbuster score!_

So they curl up and turn on _Azure Moon,_ which, conveniently enough, Felix also seems to love. Less for the plot, and more for the swords.

The drama's creators were intent on being true to history as much as they could—even if they added a little color here and there with lively shenanigans between the cast members—and their love and attention shows. Most of the names of the historical figures in Byleth Eisner's troop have been lost to time, but one core document has retained records of the houses of Faerghus who participated in the revolution.

Dominic and Fraldarius are two of those houses, much to Annette's glee.

She points out a surly, single-minded swordsman named Forsythe Fraldarius, and whispers, _Hey, it's you._ And when Annette's namesake makes an appearance as a nerdy, socially awkward bookworm who's always writing away, Felix can't resist a teasing _Looks like nothing's changed._

But the last time they watched the entirety of the drama was in high school, and apparently, in the gap since then, they completely forgot that the sullen Forsythe Fraldarius and the bookish Annette Dominic share a loveline. When Forsythe aggressively shoves Annette against the wall of the Goddess Tower to kiss her, Annette flushes to her ears and Felix awkwardly clears his throat and sidles away.

Annette cries during the Battle at Grondor Field, cheers during Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd's coronation, and squeals during his proposal to Byleth Eisner. Felix claps at every on-screen death and grins at every rousing speech of war.

They watch the end credits together, listening to the haunting strains of a classical guitar as Annette drops off to sleep.

And even though Annette spends that holiday with a ghost who she can't even touch, it's the warmest one she's ever had.

.

.

.

The new semester returns in full swing, and Annette is buried up to her ears in homework and events and lessons. She returns to the apartment exhausted to the bone every night, already dropping off to sleep by the time she's washed up and changed into her PJs. Felix seems to sense her fatigue, and he gives her plenty of space.

So, it's a surprise when he rushes down the stairwell to meet her one afternoon.

Annette has gotten off from work early, pulling into the complex's stairwell with her bag slung haphazardly over her shoulders and her shoelaces half-untied, when Felix sears through the wall to meet her. She jumps with a tiny squeak, raising her hands defensively.

"Felix!" she cries. "Don't just sneak up like—"

"Quiet," Felix murmurs. He turns in on her and presses a hand to the wall, trapping her in with an arm. Despite the fact that he's technically incorporeal and she could just walk through him, she instinctively stops short, heat blooming in her cheeks at seeing him pressed up to her, barely an inch away.

"Felix?" she says confusedly. "What are you—"

"Don't move," Felix says tersely.

Something is very, very wrong.

She's never heard him speak like that—rapid and low, the baritone register of his voice thrumming with a cold, clear adrenaline. Hearing it makes her feel both terrified and inexplicably safe at the same time, a combination that freezes her knees and pins her feet to the ground.

"What is it?" she whispers, enveloped by a chill.

His eyes are steel and his other hand is resting lightly by his hip—where his holster would have been, she realizes.

"Burglar," he says. "Armed. Stay here."

_Burglar._

_Armed._

Felix steps away, letting her breathe, and disappears up the stairwell. Annette almost cries out to him, but she stops just in time, clamping her hands over her mouth.

She's cold and hot and empty all at once. It can't be. Nothing really dangerous has happened to her, this complex is supposed to be in a safe neighborhood, what should she do, should she call Manuela, should she call the police, _what is Felix about to do—_

_CRASH!_

The harsh, sudden rattle of picture frames crashing to the ground, barely muffled by drywall, makes her jump.

_Th-th-thud thud thud—_

Books are plummeting to the floor in an avalanche of paper, and Annette winces. She hopes her collection isn't completely destroyed before she berates herself; clearly, that shouldn't be her top priority.

She hears an inelegant yelp, and the door to the stairwell flies open. A long, lanky figure bowls right into Annette, blasting her with the force of a bombshell. She topples backward and slams into the wall. Spots aggressively speckle her vision.

Annette groans and rubs her eyes. Her sight gradually clears to reveal the offending burglar: a shock of grey hair, a freckle-splashed face, and two pale green eyes wide with shock.

"Annette!" Ashe Ubert exclaims.

"Ashe?" Annette says dumbly. She stares, disoriented, like she's just landed herself in a supremely bizarre dream.

Ashe is here. Why is Ashe here? Sure, he lives within an hour's drive—but she hasn't caught up with him in _months._

Felix pulls her out of her daze by storming through the wall, hands balled into fists and spine threaded with tension. She has no doubt that, were he not a ghost, he'd be socking Ashe right in the face. Or maybe the solar plexus. Or maybe both, simultaneously.

"Hi, Annette, hi," Ashe fumbles. He reaches out a hand to help her up, Crestless and completely unaware of the livid ghost at his back. "How've you been? How's school?"

" _That's_ Ashe Ubert?" Felix hisses. His voice is sharp and thrumming with hostility. The stairwell's overhead lights flicker, threaded with excess energy.

"Yes," Annette says quickly, trying to placate him. She grips Ashe's hand, and he pulls her up.

"Yes?" says Ashe, bemused.

Annette flushes. "I mean, good! School's good. I—I'm learning a lot."

"He _broke into your apartment,_ " Felix snarls with a thread of panic in his voice. "He's _armed with a knife._ "

"That's great," says Ashe brightly, and _Goddess help her_ it's so hard to keep track of two conversations at once. "Sorry to disturb you, I thought you'd still be out for a few hours."

"Annette, get away!" Felix says, and he sounds almost desperate. He reaches out his hand for the closest object, a large waste container, and _sweet Seiros_ it's all metal and if he hits Ashe with that Ashe is going to bite the dust right then and there—

"Stop!" she cries frantically, waving towards Felix.

Felix, mercifully enough, stops.

Ashe quickly drops her hand, cheeks coloring. "I'm so sorry," he blurts. "I didn't realize that I was still holding your hand, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable—"

Her brain is going to _explode._

Annette takes a quick breath and pinches her nose, as if stopping the airflow to her brain is going to help her think. Weirdly enough, it does seem to help her calm down.

"Ashe," she says, her tone even, "do you have a knife?"

Ashe stares blankly at her for one second, two, three—then horror paints across his face. He brings something out from the long pocket in his jacket, which causes Felix to tense visibly. Thankfully, it's just his favorite chef's knife, safely sheathed in black thermo-resin.

"Oh, Goddess, it's just—it's my knife, I brought it for cooking, did I scare you?" He looks genuinely distressed. "I'm so sorry, Annette, this all went terribly wrong!"

"It's okay, it's okay," Annette reassures him hurriedly, despite everything on Felix's face implying that it is very much _not_ okay. Felix doesn't know Ashe like she does: as one of the kindest, gentlest souls to exist in all of Fódlan.

"It's not exactly okay," Ashe mumbles. "I was supposed to drop in and cook you a surprise meal, and I botched the surprise, I botched the meal, and now I've apparently botched the drop-in and made you think for a split second that I was an armed burglar trying to kill you."

_You didn't make_ me _think that,_ Annette muses. Not that she'll say that aloud.

"Honestly, Ashe, it's just good to see you," she says. "Why were you trying to make me a meal?"

Ashe has finally started to relax, in contrast to the glowering beast behind him, who only seems to be getting more and more restless with each passing second.

"I'm in town for a culinary boot camp for the semester," he says. "If I pass, I'll consider myself ready to join Dedue's restaurant. He's been offering a spot, but I just haven't felt qualified, you know?"

Yes, definitely one of the kindest, gentlest souls in Fódlan. "That sounds wonderful!" Annette says, beaming.

Felix glowers.

"Right?" says Ashe excitedly. "I've been busy catching up with everyone, Marianne and I had dinner the other night"—she doesn't miss the telltale flush on his cheeks—"and I just had lunch with Mercedes! She's the one who told me you've been having a pretty rough go of it, what with juggling school and teaching and tutoring, so... I just thought I'd drop by and make you something."

"I've heard better excuses from bank robbers caught red-handed," Felix mutters darkly.

Annette dismisses that comment. "That's really sweet of you, Ashe," she says with a smile. "And I appreciate you dropping by, and I've missed you, but, um, you just can't pick my lock and break into my apartment."

Ashe's mouth slackens. He colors like a tomato.

"I would never!" he says frantically. "Anymore, I mean! I wouldn't ever, anymore! That's—lockpicking is left behind in my dark, forgotten past!"

(He'd grown up in rough circumstances before he was taken in by the kindly businessman Lonato Gaspard, and several poor habits—like kleptomania—had lingered with him throughout high school.)

Annette blinks. "Then how did you get inside?" she asks.

Ashe thumbs something from his pocket and dangles it in front of her: a little key, swinging on a silver ring.

"I got the spare key from Mercedes," he says.

"Legally?"

" _Yes,_ Anne!"

She can't help but giggle. "Sorry, sorry. You know I'm just teasing you."

She reaches out and ruffles his hair—now she has to _tiptoe_ to do so, curse his growth spurt. Ashe laughs, batting at her hand.

A muscle in Felix's cheek twitches.

"Well," says Annette, "since you're here, would you like to come inside?"

Ashe shakes his head with a sheepish grin. "Oh, no, I've learned my lesson. There's—uh—I'm not sure how, but I think I disrupted something in your apartment, and all these things started falling everywhere—"

"Don't worry about it," Annette says quickly.

"Okay." Ashe quiets for a second. He glances at her with those wide, pale green eyes. "It's not. Uh. It's not a... ghost or anything, right? I imagine you'd be able to see one."

Felix snorts.

"I, yes, I _would_ be able to see one," Annette mumbles evasively.

"Oh, good, good," Ashe says, relieved. "I'll, um. I'll just use the kitchens at the culinary class. But I _will_ drop by with some food later, I promise you that."

"Don't bother," says Felix.

"That's super thoughtful of you," says Annette, "but don't feel pressured, okay?"

Ashe's grin melts from embarrassed to warm, and he smiles like the sunshine. "It really was great to talk with you, Anne. Let's catch up sometime!"

Annette mirrors his grin. "Take care, and good luck with your culinary bootcamp!"

Ashe sweeps her into a hug, comfy and warm. His hoodie smells like mint—refreshing and friendly, just like him. Annette slips her arms around him, soaking in his optimistic energy.

Two seconds, four seconds, six seconds.

Felix _growls._

Annette almost jumps at the odd sound, low and guttural. His expression is dark and thunderous, brows drawn down and lips pulled into a sneer.

Ashe, who hasn't heard the growl, draws back with a blissfully ignorant smile. He gives one last blithe wave before he turns and tromps down the stairwell.

Annette watches him leave. Beside her, Felix is practically vibrating with animosity. He's really working himself up for no good reason—Ashe hadn't been trying to hurt her, after all. When she turns to address him, it's with her hands on her hips.

"You can't kill people," she says, half-chidingly, half-disbelievingly. "Ghosts can't _kill,_ that wouldn't be _fair._ "

Felix's angular face seems even sharper. "Never heard of malevolent spirits?"

"I have." She doesn't give. "You're not supposed to be one of them."

She pulls up the stairs and steps into the hallway, looking for her apartment. Felix steps beside her, his jaw clamped tight. Her words seemed to only antagonize him.

"If you smile at him like that, he's going to get the wrong idea," Felix says coldly as she jams a key into her door.

"Smile at who now?"

"That kid."

"Hey, you investigated it yourself," Annette says, somewhat pointedly. "We both realized we were better off as friends."

"Didn't seem like it," Felix says.

His voice is still tight. Amber cuts angrily into her, and it makes her feel defensive.

"Why does it matter?" she says accusingly. "I _do_ speak to men every day, Felix."

Felix looks away, clearly reining in his frustration. "It's different if he's an ex-boyfriend," he mutters.

She almost laughs in disbelief. "Why?"

"I don't know," he says curtly.

"Because you're jealous?"

"As if," Felix snaps.

"Exactly," she snaps back. "As if."

Felix seems startled by that. He drifts behind her sullenly as she enters her apartment, righting picture frames and picking books off of the ground from when he terrified Ashe out of the room. Annette lets the fire of her temper cool before she turns to him, worrying her lower lip.

"Thank you," she offers, awkward but genuine. "For looking out for me. I appreciated it."

His eyes burn into her. "Is this how you're going to handle an actual burglary?" he demands.

She narrows her eyes. "I doubt it'll happen."

"It still could. Don't you have a better way of dealing with intruders?"

His accusatory tone wells up that pit of anger in her again. Why couldn't he just calmly accept her thanks? "I don't exactly have the money to hire a security detail, no," she says tightly.

"I know that," Felix snaps, and she almost snaps back when—"but I don't want you to get hurt."

Annette stops in her tracks, her argument dying in her throat.

"I don't think you realize." He starts pacing invisible grooves into the carpet. "I don't think _I_ realized. How vulnerable you are."

"I hope you realize the irony of that coming from someone who died," Annette fumbles.

"That's exactly _why,_ " Felix says derisively. "You don't have a roommate, you don't have a pet, your parents aren't involved in your life, and your best friend is drowning in med school. At least my team knew that I'd been shot within 12 hours. If something happens to you, like if you're kidnapped or assaulted, it'd take days, maybe even weeks for anyone to know."

Annette's lost all words. Felix suddenly stops, his eyes fixed on his pale, flickering hands.

"If I was alive, I could have," and his voice takes on a bitter, frustrated edge as he winds his fingers into fists, "I could have distracted him, I could have intimidated him or restrained him, I could have—done _something._ "

Annette links her fingers together tightly. "Ashe is a friend, not an intruder."

" _This time,_ he was a friend. Next time—" Felix exhales through his teeth and rakes a hand through his hair. "I'm less useful than a common dog. Can't even bite anyone."

Seeing him upset for her, _protective_ of her, makes her feel... odd. Annette swallows her rising heartbeat.

Felix turns on her. His eyes are cold, but somehow, stormy—hazel swimming in amber. "I want to be there. Here." Another frustrated noise. "Whatever. Instead, I'm... not. So you need to act accordingly, get an alarm or something. Because I don't need you joining me. This apartment is only big enough for one ghost."

And it clicks, despite his brusque words.

To Felix, Ashe is more than just a shifty ex-boyfriend or a potential criminal. He represents what Felix can't have.

He's alive.

.

.

.

(Annette installs an alarm the following week. It doesn't help Felix feel any better.)

.

.

.

Winter starts to fade into verdant warmth, and Felix poses an unusual question after dinner.

"What's your dream, Annette?" he asks.

Annette raises her head from the table, rainbow pen dangling between her fingers. The tip ominously swings over the theory page she's been grading.

"That's sudden," she says.

Felix points at the book floating in front of him. _Your Dreamland is Here,_ boasts the cover in bold glyphs, followed by elegant serif lettering that reads _How to Find and Execute Your Lifelong Vision._

"Oh," Annette laughs. "I see you've hit my self-help shelf."

"Did these books actually help you?"

"I'm not sure."

"Then are they really self-help," Felix says, "or are they just genreless books?"

She likes this dumb banter with Felix, she likes talking with Felix, she likes...

"Your dream, Annette?" Felix prompts before she can finish that thought. His words are dry and unamused, but he's leaning forward with one elbow on the table, betraying his interest.

He wants to hear from her.

"You're going to think I'm ridiculous," Annette says.

"Probably not."

"Crazy."

"That, yes, maybe."

She laughs a little and sets her rainbow pen on the table. "I want to teach music to children in elementary schools," she says. "Schools that don't have very developed programs or lots of budget. I want to teach them how music can bring them joy, no matter where they are or what they have. And then I want to bring them into children's hospitals and orphanages, where children can't see their parents or don't have their parents, and—I know it'd actually be difficult and frustrating, and probably a lot of paperwork, but that's my dream, just to show what love music can bring. Music is just, it's soul-touching, Felix, and I"—that's weird, when did she start crying—"I want some little girl out there, who, who doesn't see her father, to know that—that there's still love for her in the world."

She's awkwardly sitting at the dining table, halfway through grading theory assignments with a rainbow pen, sobbing because she wants something so _badly_ and she didn't realize it until Felix made her stop and look at it, and now she wants it so badly that it hurts.

Felix crouches by her, and one of his arms shimmers as he braces it around her shoulder.

She can't feel his touch.

"It's a noble aim," Felix says. His voice is so strangely soft. Has it always been that soft?

Annette's breath shudders as she inhales. "Maybe," she stumbles. "I don't know if it's noble. It's selfish and projecting, more than anything."

"I don't think so."

She half-laughs, half-sobs. In that moment, she wishes, so keenly that it hurts, so sharply that it stabs her in the chest, that she can feel the warmth of his arms, the fabric of his sleeves, _anything_ from him. Instead, his closeness just strikes her deeper in her loneliness.

"I wish you were here, Felix," she mumbles.

He pauses. He knows what she means.

"Me too," he says, his tone still so dangerously, preciously soft.

He says nothing more. He sits there, so close but so far, and she cries into her sweater because it's so cold around her.

When did it start to matter?

.

.

.

_The number you have called is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone._

_BEEP._

"Hi, Dad. It's Annette. Things are... I... some... Things are okay. I love you."

_BEEP._

.

.

.

It had to end at some point.

It had to.

Spring awakens from the trance of winter, and Annette awakens from her dreams and delusions.

Her fingers shake as she accepts the dog-eared manila folder from a young couple. Around her, a spring breeze sweeps teasingly through the flowering trees of Teuteches Brook Elementary. The bright blossoms and vibrant leaves clash against the folder's dull cream, and the garish contrast almost makes her laugh.

She always knew that it had to end at some point.

She just didn't think it would be so soon.

.

.

.

Something is wrong with Annette when she returns to the apartment that day.

She's too punchy, cracking odd jokes and puns that she'd _never_ crack otherwise, laughing at anything and everything that isn't funny. She whistles as she throws together dinner instead of singing, and not only does she manage to burn her beef stir-fry _and her salad,_ but she nearly sets off the fire alarm and floods the whole apartment.

Felix carefully, seriously, and worriedly pulls her aside, sits her down on the couch, and says: "What happened?"

Annette grins up at him. "Nothing!" she says brightly, too brightly.

There's no brightness in her eyes.

"Annette," Felix says, almost chidingly. He glares at her as if that'll intimidate her into a proper answer.

"I'm just having a great time, you know, being my usual forgetful self and burning _a salad_ —I didn't even think that was possible, did you? Anyways, it'll be a pretty funny story to tell Mercie—"

"Annette."

"It wasn't even on the stove. How did I manage to burn it? I have no idea. Maybe I'm a culinary genius. Or a culinary opposite-genius. That's a thing, isn't it? It better be. Maybe I could make that my new occupation, I think I'd be _really_ good at it."

"Annette, please." Felix's gaze isn't harsh anymore. It's soft and frayed at the edges, genuine worry touching the amber in his eyes. "I know when you're forcing a smile."

Annette feels the grin die on her face. Emptiness consumes her, as heavy and sudden as a wave crashing down on her. No matter how hard she tries, she can't summon her smile back. She feels that dead space in her chest, and she knows—

—it's time.

She's been trying to delay this for too long, to cling onto what she knows.

Annette meets Felix's gaze, her heart in her throat. "There's something I have to show you," she says softly.

Felix stares at her, uncomprehending. She crouches down and unzips her bag. Her hands fumble into the first compartment, and it's obvious that they're shaking hard.

"I was kind of avoiding it," she mumbles. "I mean, I didn't—I'd never want to hide something from you on purpose, especially not something this important. But it just... it meant a lot, you know? I needed time to... accept it, in a way."

"You're being pretty intimidating," Felix says. "What should I expect here?"

Her fingers clamp on the intended object, and she hesitates for a moment, still squatting on her heels. She could just not take it out, she could just let it lie—

No. Cruel thought. Selfish thought. Bad Annette, _bad_ Annette.

She breathes deep, letting the air give her some courage, and pulls it out, thrusting it in Felix's direction.

It's a simple, unassuming manila folder, held together with old paper clips and a worn rubber band. Poking out of the edges like stray hairs are newspaper clippings, ragged-edged photos, and files that are sloppily creased, as if they were folded away in a hurry.

Felix's eyes land on the folder, and it takes a moment for him to understand. She feels the folder gently levitate out of her grasp. She can sense his eyes flicking to where a tidy note is written over the dog-eared corner: _For Felix. Go to sleep already, you cranky bastard._

It's a pretty awful way to say _rest in peace,_ even if the writers meant well.

Annette knows Felix understands when he sucks in a sharp breath. "Where did you get this?" he says, his voice barely there.

His fingers graze the file like it's sacred.

"It wasn't me. It..." Annette closes her eyes. "I'd just ended my shift at Teuteches. There were two officers waiting for me outside the school, and, they pulled me aside, they gave me this. They introduced themselves as Ingrid and Sylvain. And... you never mentioned their names, but I knew who they were. They knew I'd moved into this apartment, they were thinking of you the whole time."

Felix's thumb traces the cover of the file, part in wonder, part in hesitation.

"It took a while," Annette babbles, and she's fighting so, so hard to keep the threatening wave of tears out of her voice, because she knows what this means. "It took a while because there was so much cover-up and secrecy, and—Glenn discovered a huge scheme of corruption, and Ingrid and Sylvain had to fight through all of it. But they did it. They got the answer for you."

Her voice stutters.

She forces herself to push through.

"It's all right here," she chokes, "and, and once you read it, you can rest in peace."

Felix's thumb stops.

He raises his head, amber-caramel cutting into her like a knife. Annette quickly ducks her head under her hand. She doesn't want him to see her cry; it isn't fair to pressure him like that.

This is a happy occasion for him.

She can't be selfish.

Felix slowly waves his hand, and the file settles carefully on the couch, wafting down like a leaf. He stands there for a moment, silent. Annette wants to look up at him, but she knows that if she does, she'll immediately burst into tears.

Felix steps closer. The carpet is distorted beneath the pale illusion of his shoes.

"Lower your hand, Annette," he says softly.

The warmth in his tone only serves to choke her up. She raises up her other hand to hide her face, shaking.

"Annette." His hands raise. They can't touch hers.

Reluctantly, she brings her hands down, clasping them to her chest. She can feel the tears building behind her eyes, waiting to escape at a moment's notice. She doesn't want to cry. She _can't_ cry.

Felix is looking at her face; she can feel his gaze. She can't bring herself to meet it.

"The file," Felix says hoarsely. "I could just _not_ read it."

The words rattle up Annette's spine, and it takes her a moment to find a reply. She knows the weight of that offer, and just what it means for him to suggest it.

"You deserve the truth," she whispers.

"I don't deserve anything for my mistakes."

"People sacrificed so much just to get this to you."

He doesn't argue. She's right on that one.

"Then should I read it?" he says, still quiet, still searching.

"I don't... I don't want you bound to this place because of regret," Annette whispers.

She sees the mirage of his thumb brushing her cheek. Oh, she's started crying. How inconvenient. She wipes at her own face, sternly telling her tears to obey. She needs to be strong for just a few minutes more.

"Okay," is all Felix says.

Annette sees the manila folder rise from the couch. She hears the light flicker of pages as they turn over beneath the dim lamplight. She stares at some invisible point in the floor, suddenly hating herself; seeing him fade right before her eyes is going to kill her, and yet, she wants to be there, _needs_ to be there, when he slips away. She's so weak that it hurts.

The seconds stretch on painfully as Felix thumbs through the file. He gives no reaction; no light hiss, no intake of breath, not even a click of the tongue. Sometimes he peels back to previous pages and flips between sections, and she wonders what's racing through his mind. He's seeing pictures of his brother's death, and maybe even his own—surely it's affecting him in some way.

Eventually, he closes the file, and it wafts back onto the couch.

"I see," he says. His tone is inscrutable. "Ingrid and Sylvain worked hard."

"They did," Annette agrees distantly. She finally summons the courage to look up at his face. It's a mistake; his expression is just as unreadable as his voice, jaw relaxed and gaze pensively fixed somewhere in the distance.

"How was it?" she tries.

"More or less what I expected." His gaze cuts into her. "But it's nice, I guess. To have..."

"Closure?"

A vague hum of assent. He already feels like he's becoming distant, his rawer emotions settling into a sense of peace.

Annette swallows. "Are you passing on, Felix?"

He blinks, and for one moment, he's alert again. There's a tinge of regret in his eyes as he focuses on her.

"I think so," he says. He sounds unusually calm.

It's painful. It's even more painful than she thought it would be, seeing him drift away, _feeling_ him drift away right before her eyes.

Annette reaches out, as if she can snag onto his hem or catch his fingers. Her hand passes through his wrist, which—it seems more translucent than before, like frosted glass that's beginning to clear.

He's going to fade. He's going to leave.

"Annette," Felix murmurs. He steps closer to her. She can see the lines of his forearms, the curve of his neck, the individual threads of his shirt, everything that's fake and illusory—

_Don't do this, don't come close when you're going so far—_

"Any—any final wishes?" Annette bumbles, scrounging up words. "Anything I can do for you?"

He smiles that crooked smile that she hates and loves. "Can you sing for me?" he says.

_One last time,_ unspoken.

Annette chokes out an awkward laugh. She has no words, so she hums something that sounds like the sea and tastes like the sky. The gentle smile that overtakes Felix's face is almost worth it, even if she wants to berate him when he reaches for her. There's no point in trying to touch her.

But then she feels something impossible: a brush of skin against her hand, warm and lightly callused.

The song halts in her throat, and she looks up with wide eyes. She sees her own shock mirrored in Felix's gaze, amber clear and vibrant.

"What was," she starts—

"Keep singing," Felix says hoarsely, and he's reaching out his other hand.

She does, bracing her lips together, and continues humming. Dominent pickup to tonic, a winding lullaby in harmonic minor, sorrowful and yearning with a hint of hope—

Felix's fingers brush over hers. There it is again: callused, warm skin.

It's his hand. Meeting her hand.

It's impossible.

Annette stares wordlessly, watching as his thumb pulls up, running over the back of her knuckles. "I don't understand," she whispers.

But something dawns on Felix's face. He stares at her in wonder.

"What did you say about music?" he says.

Something lifts in Annette's chest like butterfly wings. She remembers.

"That it's soul-touching," she says.

Soul-touching.

The melody builds in her, pulled together from every moment in the past eight months where they've smiled, where they've talked, where they've thrown up holiday decorations and watched shows and debated books. She sings, raw and wordless without structure and reason. It wrenches from beyond her lungs, wringing directly from her heart, pulsing with lifeblood and roaring to her ears. She sings, every note crying from her throat, growing out of her mouth like unwieldy branches and thorns.

And Felix touches her.

Annette can't open her eyes; it'll break her concentration, it'll destroy the dam that holds back her tears. But she feels his caress, as warm and real as flesh and bone, light calluses of a large hand cupping her cheek, a thumb running along her jaw. Felix's hand is solid on her face.

She's incorporeal enough. His soul can touch hers.

Annette keeps singing, choked and strained, wrapped with an odd, weightless feeling that swirls up her veins. She feels Felix wind an arm around her waist and pull her close, his index finger tracing comforting circles in the small of her back. His hand is warm. It burns through the cotton of her cardigan.

He's gentle, so gentle. She can read concern in his touch like notes on a page, treading in a chromatic scale up her spine until his fingers rest at the base of her neck, slow like he'll startle her and soft like he'll break her. He breathes out ragged and she feels the warm air flood over her nose— _oh,_ he's close.

His mouth seals over hers and he swallows her song.

For this moment, he's human. His lips are rough and unapologetic on hers, urgent with the time he knows is slipping away. It's so different from his arm canted delicately around her shoulders, bracing her like she's made of porcelain.

He kisses her and kisses her again. She coils her hands in his shirt and yanks him closer, trying to take in everything she can. The slant of his shoulders. The line of his jaw. The angle of his lashes on his cheek.

She never thought that the sweetest sendoff could taste so bitter.

Felix breaks away with a shuddering exhale. She can't open her eyes, she can't lose her concentration, she can't bring herself to look at him.

"Goodbye," she whispers, trembling. "I—"

Felix presses his forehead to hers. "Don't."

She swallows her words back in her throat. She doesn't.

The seconds tick on as she scrambles to memorize the feeling of his hand caressing her cheek: one, two, three, four—

She hears a long, quiet sigh. The hand withdraws.

_No, too few, don't go—_

She reaches out blindly, her hand scrabbling for an arm, a shoulder, the hem of a shirt, anything. She's only met with cold air. She opens her eyes, her vision blurred.

The apartment is empty.

Felix is gone.

Annette sinks to her knees and covers her face with her hands. She stays there until the sun falls beneath the horizon.

.

.

.

The apartment is quiet throughout the next few days. Deathly quiet, like a coffin, or a morgue. Annette is cold when she wakes and empty when she sleeps.

Funny. She didn't think it'd be so hard to be left by someone who was dead.

She tries to tape herself together with smiles and songs as she trudges through classes at Garreg Mach, shifts at Teuteches Brook, and private tutoring after school. But she doesn't feel happy when she aces her Human Development midterm. She doesn't feel sad when she recounts the details of her secret friendship with a resident ghost to a wide-eyed, softhearted Mercie. She doesn't even feel angry when Flayn dumps another bucket of plush fish on her desk, unwarranted.

She doesn't feel much of anything at all.

.

.

.

One month trudges on—thirty days where Annette drags herself out of bed to face the day—when it happens.

The doorbell rings.

Wearily, she pulls herself from the couch and slogs toward the door. She masks a giant yawn with one hand, idly combing her bangs into something presentable with her fingers. She tugs open the door with an uneven creak.

Blue eyes like slate and sky meet hers.

"Annette," says a low, crumbly voice that instantly makes her throat swell.

Gustave Edward Dominic stands before her in all his faded orange hair, collared robes, and weathered skin. The square set of his jaw has sunken in with the toll of time, the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth more pronounced—but he is there.

Her father has come home.

Annette reaches out, her fingers snagging on the thick weave of his jacket. There's a painful lump in her throat, and when she speaks, her voice is thick with unshed tears.

"Dad," she whispers.

He reaches out his arms, his face tense and uncertain. Annette doesn't hesitate.

She throws her arms around him and clings tightly, her knees giving out like she's a little girl all over again.

After a much-needed, long overdue tearful exchange, Gustave relates his story over tea. One month ago, while he was praying at the temple, a spirit appeared to him and emphasized—in no uncertain terms, and with a touch of shockingly crass language—that he was to return home. So Gustave packed his belongings, concluded his responsibilities in the Oghma Mountains, and set off to the heart of United Fódlan.

Annette almost laughs at the story, and maybe she would have in different circumstances. Trust her father to listen to some dead ghost instead of his own daugh—

—some dead ghost?

_What was the spirit's name?_ Annette asks breathlessly. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, maybe it's just her clinging for closure—

_He refused to tell me._ Gustave is frowning.

Annette slumps, feeling that little hint of disappointment just above her gut. But Gustave continues— _He did have an odd way of putting it, something like... it was... classified, and I was not privy to such information._

Her heart jumps in her throat. She can hear Felix's voice in her ears, cold and clear, businesslike as if he's rattling off the Fifth Amendment: _That's classified information. You don't have the clearance to know._

Only law enforcement officials would word it that way.

Annette thought she cried herself out, but she feels more tears washing up to her eyes.

She knows it was him. It _had_ to be him.

Somehow, in his last moments, Felix was able to unbind from her apartment. He was able to find a tie with her father. And as he faded away, he was able to give one last message: _Go back to your daughter._

_Don't think you have time to redeem yourself first._

_Look at me._

_You don't have time._

Felix, as he drifted away, was able to touch the one thing in her life that she, a living person, had never been able to touch.

Annette chokes on a half-formed sob. A callused hand presses to her cheek; Gustave catches her tear with the tip of his finger, his brows drawn down in gentle worry. This is _real,_ isn't it, her father standing in front of her, in the flesh, actually showing _love_ for her instead of consuming self-deprecation and blinding guilt.

She pulls him into a tight hug, pressing her face into his jacket and clinging on so that he'll never leave again.

This is a gift from Felix.

His last gift before he passed on.

.

.

.

The next day, Annette returns to her apartment laden with bags and books from a particularly long-winded afternoon at work. She fumbles around her bag for her keys. When she accidentally drops them on her shoes, she bites back a mild curse.

Then the door to her apartment, in a great display of courtesy, unlocks. From the inside.

Annette sighs, stooping to pick up her keys anyway. "Ashe," she says resignedly, pushing into the apartment, "I've told you before, I appreciate the thought, but please let me know before you drop—"

The words are stolen from her mouth. Not by Ashe.

Lounging on her loveseat, nestled in her fleece throw printed with dancing cartoon lions, and casually watching _Pride and Prejudice_ with his chin propped on a hand, is one Felix Hugo Fraldarius.

He's still pale and wispy at the edges, ghostlike, but his image persists when Annette rubs at her eyes and blinks.

The warning tone of an alarm starts pinging, _oh right she installed an alarm,_ and Annette quickly hurries to deactivate it. She drops her bags carelessly in the kitchen area, then whips around to scan the loveseat.

Felix is still there, in her apartment, sitting on her couch. His eyes dart to hers. She's stricken by that soulful, beautiful, crystalline amber-caramel, and she knows.

It's really him.

He doesn't react much to her presence. "It's the rain scene," is all he says, jerking his chin at the TV. "Your favorite."

Annette's gaze follows his movements and rests on Mr. Darcy's drenched image for all of two seconds. Then her eyes snap back to Felix.

She storms to the remote in a flurry of wine skirts and cream sweaters and turns off the TV.

Felix looks at her with muted surprise. "I thought you liked that scene."

"I _love_ it," Annette hisses through her teeth. Every syllable is trembling with suppressed rage. "It's my _favorite_ scene in the movie, it's one of the _greatest_ moments in cinematic history, I _adore_ it—"

"I don't think you're saying what I'm hearing—"

"—and if it just _disappeared from my life_ one day, I'd be inconsolable for weeks, I'd be bawling my eyes out, I'd miss it terribly, I"—her throat is choking up and she feels tears bleed from her eyes, trailing down her cheeks—"I wouldn't ever be able to find a replacement, _that's_ how special it is!"

Felix's lips part. His eyes, still sharp amber beneath the pale veneer of his spirit form, scan her face.

"You should really tell that to the director," he murmurs, low and melodic in a way that rumbles her bones. "He'd like to hear that."

Annette wants to reach out and wrap her fingers in his collar and shake him like a tambourine, she's so mad. Instead, she only stands there, trembling like a leaf.

Felix pushes the fleece blanket off of his lap and stands. She forgot how much taller he was than her. It only took her a month to forget.

"I'm sorry, Annette," he says gently. "I thought you knew I'd be back."

"You were gone." Her voice is a whisper. Her knees are shaking. "You faded away. Your tether, your regret, it disappeared. You were gone."

"I'm here." He reaches up to her face. She can't feel his fingers on her cheek.

"You left." _You left me,_ unspoken.

"I'm home."

That breaks her.

Annette cries out a song from her soul, guttural and wordless, and flings herself towards him. Felix is ready: he extends his arms, letting her form slide into his. She thuds against his chest. He feels solid and warm, _present._

His arms tighten around her, crushing at her waist, and she feels his mouth sink down to breathe in her scent. Can he smell? Can ghosts smell? Is he really a ghost, so present and aware and utterly human? She doesn't care; she clings to him without decorum, her fingers winding tightly in his hair. He's here and that's what matters.

"Missed you," Felix whispers.

Her voice catches and stumbles at that. His words are tender and kind, wrapped in the rough, husky timbre of his voice.

"Thank you," she babbles. "Thank you so, so much for bringing Dad back. I never thought... I never hoped that he'd come back. You doing that, it meant—it _really_ meant so much to me." She feels tears beading in her eyes again, but this time, she lets them fall. "I don't know if I could ever repay you."

Felix reaches out, and she feels his thumbs lightly brush her cheeks. "You don't have to repay me," he mumbles. "Didn't do it to be repaid."

She laughs a little brokenly. "Don't be silly."

" _You're_ silly." He kisses her forehead, and she flushes.

"Thank you so, so much for coming back."

He's quiet for a long moment.

"Of course," he says.

Annette returns to her song and lets it end on the leading tone, open and unresolved. Her voice fades into the furnishings, and Felix fades back to intangible. She sinks into the couch, suddenly exhausted, like all of her emotions have been yanked straight out of her chest, and now there's nothing left.

"I can't believe," she mumbles, "that your idea of a reunion after one whole month was to wait until I walked through the door, nod at the TV, and say 'It's your favorite scene.'"

Felix rubs at the back of his neck. "I didn't think there was much to say."

"You _didn't think_ there was much to—it's been thirty-one days, Felix!"

"Yeah, I know, I've been counting," Felix says sharply.

Annette stops.

Felix blinks.

"I didn't say—"

"You did." She feels a slow, sweet smile pulling up her mouth. "Aww, that's really sweet of you. I'm glad to know you were looking forward to seeing me."

"Of course I was," Felix grumbles, crossing his arms and looking away. "Your old man took forever to wrap up his business in the Oghma Mountains."

He is, in a perfectly Felix way, so grumpily affectionate that her grin only widens. "Ooh. I _see._ "

He flicks out a hand, and a pillow raises from the couch and playfully smacks her in the shoulder. "Stop smiling like that."

"Why, because you love it?"

" _Stop it._ " Another light smack from the pillow.

Annette giggles into the fabric, but relents on her teasing, if only because she needs answers. She huddles at the edge of the couch and hugs the pillow to her chest.

"How did you get there?" she asks. "No, scratch that, how are you here? After you read the file, you were _definitely_ passing on. You can't convince me otherwise."

"I was," Felix accedes, "until I found another tether."

Annette frowns. Despite the emotional turmoil of the situation, she feels that learner's part of her brain perk up. "Another tether?"

"Tethers don't have to be regret," Felix says flatly. "They can be any strong emotion. Fear, despair, anger, envy—"

She huffs. "Oh, come on, I just solved your problem! What is it now?"

Felix turns away, oddly quiet. "I don't know," he says. "What's the strongest emotion out there?"

Silence ticks its seconds on the clock.

Annette's hand covers her mouth. "Hate?" she whispers. "Who do you hate?"

He snorts, eyes flashing. "You're clueless."

"Oh goddess, do you hate _me_?!"

"It's not hate," he snaps.

She bites her lip. "Oh, fine, okay, emotions. Um, greed, lust, sloth, okay, I'm just running through the seven sins and those aren't exactly—"

"Annette!"

"Well _sorry._ " Why is he so pissy? "I can't be your perfect problem solver, Mr. Genius Detective, when I'm some silly little music grad who can't even write a half-decent opera—"

"Never mind why I'm here," Felix mutters, and he flops gracelessly back on her couch. Annette expects the cushions to bend at the force, but his image only ripples momentarily, reminding her that yes, he's still incorporeal by default. Unfortunately. She'd like to slap him at the moment, and maybe follow it up with a kiss. He confuses her.

She glares at him. "I can't just _never mind_ when you could disappear at any time, you, you—you _ghost!_ "

"I'm not going anywhere," Felix says drily. He waves his hand and the television flickers on—the food channel. It's his passive way of reminding her to eat.

"You disappeared! I thought you were exorcised!"

"Your father was praying for you." Felix tilts his head back, watching mozzarella sticks dunk in ranch on the screen. "It granted me an opening to give him a piece of my mind. Who puts mozzarella sticks in ranch?"

She grabs the remote and switches the TV off. "Don't watch the TV when you talk to me, Felix. What are you talking about?"

Felix side-eyes her awkwardly. "Your father prayed for you," he repeated. "And that... opens a kind of gateway, so to speak. So I popped in wherever he was, told him that he was a shit father—"

"Language."

"—and then realized that since he stopped praying, the gateway had closed. So I haunted a pendant of his for the journey back, which is why it took so long. Your picture was in that pendant, by the way. Your old man makes absolutely no sense."

Okay. Okay, that makes sense. Sort of. It's crazy and convoluted and has her head swimming, but it does make sense.

"Why did you find another tether?" she tries. "Why didn't you pass on?"

Since Felix has been restricted from the TV, he favors staring at his shoes. He says nothing.

"Felix?"

"I was just thinking." He stuffs his hands in his pockets. "Instead of passing on alone, it would be nice, maybe. To have someone to pass with."

Annette stares at him, an odd tingling in her throat.

Oh.

He wants to... not leave her.

He wants to pass with her. Together.

And the tether that's holding him here, the tether he found—

_Oh._

Annette raises her hands to shield her reddening face. "That, um. That sounds like it could be nice."

He glares at her. "Not before your time. If you die too early, I'll kill you."

"What a charmer." His protectiveness only makes her blush.

Felix pauses for a moment, his glare melting into an uncertain half-scowl. "It doesn't bother you?" he asks.

"What doesn't?"

He jerks a thumb to himself. "Ghost."

"Ah." She smiles at him. "You know, it's said that people born with Crests always have one foot in the spirit realm. That's why Crest bearers are thought to have lower life expectancy."

"Well, that's ominous," Felix says drily.

"I'm just saying. Consider me fey. Magical."

He reaches out a hand, and the air conditioner rattles to life. The light current brushes a lock of hair behind her ear in a feather-light caress. "You've always been magical," he says.

She flushes deeper.

"And you're sure?" Felix emphasizes. He still seems so uncertain, his amber eyes glinting topaz in the afternoon light. "Wouldn't it be better if you had a normal life? With... a normal person?"

"Oh, come on, Felix." Annette smiles, humming just enough _Danse Macabre_ to lace their fingers together. "If I was a normal girl who wanted a normal life, would I really have rented a haunted apartment?"

.

.

.

**fin**  
s.d.g

**Author's Note:**

> aa now i wish for... the modern au where felix isn't dead.... detective shenanigans with childhood friend squad, hapless music grad annette, med student mercie, and all-star chefs dedue and ashe......... 
> 
> scream with me about felannie on [my twitter!](https://twitter.com/lunachaili)


End file.
